Speedy Recovery `Miraculous'

Less Than Two Weeks After A Lightning Bolt Put 19-year-old Rodney Whitlock In A Coma, He Is Nearly Ready To Go Home.

August 7, 2002|By Jim Buynak, Sentinel Staff Writer

ORLANDO -- Rodney Whitlock can't remember the last thing he did before he was struck by lightning on Lake Eustis last month, but he knows the first thing he's going to do when he gets home.

"The very first thing I have to do is call everybody and thank them for all their prayers," the 19-year-old Umatilla man said in his Orlando Regional Medical Center hospital bed on Tuesday.

Whitlock was struck as he and his cousin Mike Kennedy Jr. tried to run from a storm while riding their water scooters on Lake Eustis on July 26. Kennedy pulled Whitlock -- his heart stopped from the strike -- from the lake as nearby residents rushed through the rain and began cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

Except for the small streak of white across the top of his red hair caused by the lightning and the pain in his left shoulder where the bolt entered before exiting through his left hand, it's as if nothing happened at all, Whitlock said.

"I can't remember anything about that day," he said after spending a few minutes trying to recollect his thoughts. "I remember working on my aunt's house."

Whitlock and his cousin were spending the summer helping their aunt restore an old house in Umatilla.

"Do you remember talking to me about moving the refrigerator?" his father, Mike Whitlock, asked him.

Whitlock again spent several minutes thinking about the question and then just shook his head.

"Well, we can't find the refrigerator," his dad chuckled. "We'll have to talk about that later."

Whitlock's unexpectedly speedy recovery from the lightning strike is "miraculous," his family says. Last Wednesday, Whitlock emerged from his coma. On Monday, he was moved from the intensive-care unit and, according to his sister, he might be going home today. "You would have had to peel me off the ceiling yesterday [Monday]," said Raquel Whitlock, his 24-year-old sister and roommate. "They took him off the chest tube! They took him off the ventilator! They took him off the bed! They took him off everything! It was an exciting day."

Raquel Whitlock has been staying at the Hubbard House, ORMC's 21-bedroom hospitality house near the hospital, since her brother was airlifted to the hospital.

She, her father and stepmother, Samantha Whitlock, have been holding an around-the-clock vigil.

"At first they prepared us for the worst," Samantha Whitlock said. "They told us it might be months before he recovers, if he would at all."

"He is doing surprisingly well," said Dr. Luis Llerena, one of the physicians treating Whitlock. "We were concerned about heart injury and concerned about damaged muscle tissue, but he's young and strong and he's been able to rebound remarkably."

Llerena, who said Whitlock had to be "shocked" at least twice to get his heart pumping on the day he was hit, said the biggest concern now is the pneumonia he developed, possibly from the bacteria and pollution in Lake Eustis that Whitlock swallowed after the strike.

"I'm just waiting for the infectious-disease doctors to give him the go-ahead to go home," Llerena said.

Mike Whitlock, who owns and operates Specialty Tree Services in Altoona, said a main part of his job is dealing with lightning strikes.

"That's what I do. I try to save trees that have been struck by lightning," he said. "But that's on trees. Not on my son."

The elder Whitlock isn't quite sure why his son has taken a sudden turn for the better; he's just happy he did.

"I've seen what lightning can do to wood," he said. "I couldn't imagine what it did to him."

The whole sequence of events since the strike has been "miraculous," he said.

"The fact that Mike [Kennedy, the cousin] was there. The fact that people on shore helped him. The paramedics' work. Everything," he said. "It's been a very, very fortunate string of events."

Hugh Hackler, who works for Lake-Sumter Emergency Medical Services, was the second person on the scene after Whitlock was struck.

"He was in cardiac arrest," Hackler said Tuesday.

But quick action by paramedics and bystanders turned things around, he said.

"I think we did our job that day, and we did it well," Hackler said. "I told Mike [Kennedy] that his actions might have saved his cousin's life. I don't think he would have made it if Mike wasn't there."

But there are still a lot of hurdles to overcome, and not all of them are physical.

Whitlock did not have insurance, and family and friends are trying to raise money to help pay his medical bills.

On Aug. 17, Affordable Well & Pump of Umatilla is going to hold a car wash with proceeds going to the family.

"We'll sell hot dogs and Cokes and take donations for the car wash," said Martha Walker, office manager. "We're just longtime friends of the family and we want to help."